Numerous soldering devices have been proposed in the past which have been designed to satisfy particular needs. For example, soldering devices have been used for soldering electrical contacts to a surface, such as a piece of glass having electrical devices embedded or otherwise formed as a part of the glass. Automobile windscreens and other windows have thus been a workpiece to which electrical contacts have been soldered so that the electrical devices in the window, such as an electric defrost element, can be attached to a voltage source.
While these windows and their electrical devices have performed satisfactorily in the past, the soldering devices used to attach electrical contacts to the windows have suffered from numerous shortcomings. For example, prior soldering devices for automobile windows required an operator or user of the device to very precisely align the soldering device on the window, and hold the device while the soldering operation was performed to solder an electrical connector to the window. Because the task of aligning such a soldering device required aligning the device with respect to the target on the window, typically a portion of the electrical device therein, along three axes or degrees of freedom, misalignment rates were high. Misalignment of the soldering device during this process leads to misplaced contacts, misaligned contacts, and/or contacts which have been soldered to the window without the force required to properly connect the electrical contact to the window. Thus, rejection and rework rates have been relatively high, resulting in increased production costs and decreased production rates.